The World Boxing Association has taken back Jarrell Miller’s mandatory position at heavyweight.

In a statement posted to its website this week, the WBA said its July heavyweight rankings contained an “inadvertent error.” Those rankings listed Miller as the division’s official mandatory challenger.

The WBA now says the real mandatory challenger is Moses Itauma, who sits at No. 1 and has been waiting on his title shot for months. It says Miller’s win over Lenier Pero was not a final eliminator, so it did not make him mandatory. The WBA apologized for the confusion.

Miller (28-1-2, 22 KOs) responded on Instagram. The post appears here as written.

“Need everyone to tag the @wbaboxingofficial And say do the right thing With BIGBABY because there so many Things in this sport that just doesn’t make sense,” Miller wrote. “I Earn my spot paid my dues I respect all the sanction Body’s it’s time to have American Heavy champion once again WBA LFG and do the right thing much love.”

He closed the post with three hashtags: #nomoregames, #nomorepolitics, #dotherightthing.

How Miller got that mandatory listing is not in dispute. When Matchroom announced Miller against Pero for April 25 in Las Vegas, the fight was billed as a WBA World Heavyweight Title eliminator. A mandatory position was presented as the prize for the winner.

Miller won it. He ground down Pero over 12 rounds on scores of 117-111, 117-111 and 115-113, handing the Cuban Olympian his first loss. The result was widely reported as making Miller the WBA mandatory. The WBA’s own July rankings then said so in print.

Now the WBA says the print was wrong.

The whole dispute sits in a single word. The fight was promoted and sold as an eliminator. The WBA now says it was not a final eliminator, the specific label that makes the winner mandatory. If that distinction existed before the opening bell, nobody said so publicly.

The WBA statement does not explain how the error happened or who made it. It does not say what Miller’s win earned him instead. It even gets the date of the fight wrong. The statement says Miller returned on April 24. The fight was Saturday, April 25.

The timing matters because the WBA title has changed hands. Oleksandr Usyk vacated the WBA, WBC and IBF belts earlier this summer. Murat Gassiev, who knocked out Kubrat Pulev in December, was elevated to full WBA champion.

Itauma, 21, faces Filip Hrgovic on August 29 in London for the vacant IBF title. The WBA has confirmed him as Gassiev’s mandatory. So between April and August, the front of the WBA heavyweight line changed occupants. The only public explanation is a four-paragraph clarification.

The WBA’s rankings operation is already under scrutiny. World Boxing News, which first carried the statement, reported that its most recent count found 43 WBA champions across 17 weight divisions.

There is also a federal law written for exactly this situation. The Muhammad Ali Boxing Reform Act passed in 2000. Sen. John McCain championed it. The law ties a sanctioning body’s ability to collect fees to ratings transparency.

Under 15 U.S.C. § 6307c, if a boxer questions his rating, the sanctioning body has seven days to give him a written explanation of its criteria, his rating, and the reasoning behind it, including answers to his specific questions. A copy goes to the Association of Boxing Commissions. A separate provision requires the body to post an explanation on its website within seven days any time a top-10 boxer’s rating changes, and keep it up for at least 30 days.

In plain terms, the law gives Miller a tool. If he formally questions his rating, the WBA owes him a written answer, not a general apology. The questions are obvious ones. What was the Pero fight sanctioned as? Who approved the eliminator billing? Who put him at the top of the July rankings, and why was it reversed?

Congress is debating boxing law right now. The Senate version of the Muhammad Ali American Boxing Revival Act, introduced by Sens. Ted Cruz and Jacky Rosen, rewrites contract rules across the sport. But the section of the House bill that put new requirements on sanctioning bodies was deleted between drafts. Bodies like the WBA stay under the same 2000 rules.

Rankings transparency was one of the four changes Nico Ali Walsh said he pushed for in his meetings on the bill. The Miller reversal is the kind of case that argument is built on. A fighter was told in the organization’s own published rankings that he was first in line. Then he was told the publication was a mistake.

Miller, 38, remains ranked near the top of the WBA heavyweight list, now behind Itauma. He does not have a fight scheduled. He has not said whether he will file a formal request under the statute. The hashtags suggest he wants the answer in public.

The WBA said its clarification was issued in the interest of transparency. As of publication, it has not said anything else.